The best developer anecdote about Thief 4 was the the developers wanted Garrett to have this high tech collapsible compound bow, but couldn't figure out how to get it to work and animate it in game. So they....paid a craftsman several thousand dollars to make it in real life so they could understand how it worked.

The best developer anecdote about Thief 4 was the the developers wanted Garrett to have this high tech collapsible compound bow, but couldn't figure out how to get it to work and animate it in game. So they....paid a craftsman several thousand dollars to make it in real life so they could understand how it worked.

It's Steampunk Batman. I'll take a metal bow any day, that's metal as hell. Square Enix gave Tomb Raider the wooden bow in 2013, 2014 was the year of metal bow for Thief. Hitman is gonna have some kinda laser bow in the next game, and it's gonna be cool too drat it

i'd love to read a detailed postmortem on nuthief. apparently it started out with a more DXHR style progression system but there was a shakeup with producers half way through production (the progression system was discarded because "garrett is already the master thief!") and all the game's mechanics went out the window. no idea why the plot stopped making any sense at all about half way through, though.

i remember before it was released seeing a promo video on the website where they were interviewing designers and the new production team side by side and they were taking these barely veiled digs at each other about "throwing work away" and stuff, i couldn't believe they actually had it up on the main page. i've occasionally tried to find it on youtube ever since but no luck.

i ultimately enjoyed it even if it wasn't very true to the originals, though i also specifically avoided using the blink move, and the "poppies" you could eat that would highlight all the interactables in the game world which was like chump mode.

I remember Rhianna Pratchett was attached to the project for a while, but dropped out.

It's Steampunk Batman. I'll take a metal bow any day, that's metal as hell. Square Enix gave Tomb Raider the wooden bow in 2013, 2014 was the year of metal bow for Thief. Hitman is gonna have some kinda laser bow in the next game, and it's gonna be cool too drat it

From Zero Punctuation's review of Thief (2014):

http://zeropunctuation.wikia.com/wiki/Thief posted:

The Garrett I remember falling in love with was a straight-talking, unapologetic anti-hero who knew when things were serious but was always ready to offer a bit of dry wit to camera upon finding a nobleman's private spanking saddle. He was not Batman, but that's what they've made him into! A broody misery-guts who communicates solely in growly macho soundbites that only make sense until you think about them!

If you asked Old Garrett why he stole, he'd answer "'Cause I need to pay rent, and it's the only thing I'm good at, so shut up and let go of your wallet." New Garrett would (and indeed does) give the answer "Because it's what I do." No, Garrett, it's what you are currently doing.

"Hey, Yahtzee, why are you kicking New Garrett in the stomach?"
"'Cause it's what I'm currently doing!"

They're not "putting a new spin" on the guy, they're boiling down a complex and interesting character into a boring, easily-digestible archetype, i.e. Batman.

"I can no longer sit back and allow nationalist shitposting, nationalist indoctrination, nationalist subversion, and the German nationalist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious game balance."

They took a guy who preferred getting exploited by his landlord over a pretty lovely apartment he couldn't pay for to living in a literal invisible magic castle complex and put him into a secret lair in a loving clocktower covered in stolen goods he never bothers to sell.

They missed the point of that character about as hard as it's possible to.

Is it? How? Just seems like a different take on the formula with some added edginess to me. It's pretty clearly aping Dishonored wholesale (in tone and mission structure) and it probably would have been better without all the grit but I'm still having fun.

edit: Also, "quite bad compared to one of the best stealth games ever made" is a pretty lovely comparison lol. Every video game is quite bad compared to games that are the pinnacle of their genre so saying that means very little.